MIDLAND, Texas (BP)–Asians and Texans. Country boys and urban executives. Moms and singles. Twenty-somethings and early retirees. A police officer and a college professor.
The second-largest group of new missionaries in the history of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board featured plenty of variety. But all 116 of them share one thing in common: a clear call from God to go to the nations with the Gospel.
Some heard His call as children. Others heard Him through the voices and prayers of their own children. Many heard while serving overseas as volunteers or short-term missions workers.
They were appointed May 20 before about 1,000 people who gathered at the Chaparral Center on the campus of Midland (Texas) College. They’ll join more than 5,200 others working around the world.
Many of the new workers didn’t tell the crowd their full names or where they’re going because of the difficult, potentially dangerous areas where they will serve.
“They are going to places where a few years ago we would never have imagined sending missionaries,” IMB President Jerry Rankin said. “They have found channels of creative access to share the Gospel in restricted countries and among unreached people groups.”
Yet no matter how well they have prepared themselves for the mission task, he added, only God can accomplish it through them as they serve Him.
“God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called,” Rankin told the new missionaries. “Your call wasn’t to be a missionary. It was to the Lordship of Jesus.”
That’s something this new band of servants also shares with the largest-ever group of new Southern Baptist missionaries — 124 — who were appointed to go out into a dangerous world in 2001, only two months after 9/11.
GOD’S VOICE
— How did God speak to one couple going to Africa? For him, the voice came through an atheist college student — and an orphan on the streets of Calcutta. For her, it came through a burn victim in Bangalore, India, and a six-month-old baby with AIDS in Zimbabwe. “God’s call, which has burned in both of our hearts since junior high, is now leading us to the ends of the earth,” he said.
— For Jonathan C., who’s on the way to Asia, the decisive moment came as he told Bible stories in a West African village. “Four men were invited; 22 came,” he recounted. “God said, ‘This is what I want you to do.'”
— “After being a police officer for nine years, God told me to no longer put people in jail, but to set them free with the Gospel,” another appointee said.
— “A missionary came to speak at our church last summer, and God spoke six words that freaked me out: ‘You need to walk this road,'” recounted Roger L., also going to Asia. “I said, ‘God, you’ve got the wrong man.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.'”
— “In 1975 we began praying for Russian believers imprisoned for sharing the Gospel, never imagining that God would call us to share the Gospel and plant churches in Moscow alongside those heroes of faith,” Charles Moeller said, his voice filled with awe.
— “Thirty years ago I came to America with the hope for a better life,” said one of the 18 ethnic Asians appointed. “I got much more than that. Now I’m going back [to Asia] to share the blessings.”
— “Showing my toddler photos of children of south Asia, I told her, ‘These children don’t know Jesus,'” another new missionary related. “She said, ‘Mommy, you’ve GOT to tell ’em.'”
— “We were seeking the American dream,” said Angie W, also going to south Asia with her husband. “Little did we know that God had a greater plan. As we looked for a reason, a purpose for living, God told us to first seek Him.”
‘ALL YOU NEED’
When God’s call came, “some of you thought it would be to a nice suburban pastorate or to teach Sunday School,” Rankin told the new missionaries. The call to missions is a demanding one, and everyone feels inadequate to the task, he said.
Moses felt inadequate when God called him from the burning bush to lead the Israelites out of oppression in Egypt, Rankin reminded the group. “‘I’m not a good speaker,’ Moses told God. ‘Please send someone else,’ he pleaded.
“God said, ‘Moses, I go with you,'” Rankin said. Likewise, Jesus sends His followers out into all the world and promises to go with them, he continued.
“That’s all that matters — and it’s all you need.”
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